In a print system which is constructed by an image inputting apparatus such as a digital still camera or the like, a host information processing apparatus such as a personal computer, and a printer, the user must execute the following procedures upon printing image data captured by image sensing.
(1) The user connects the computer and image inputting apparatus via a serial cable or the like, transfers the sensed image to the computer, and stores the transferred image in a hard disk or the like as an image data file.
(2) The user launches photoretouch software.
(3) The user opens the image data file stored in the hard disk or the like from the photoretouch software.
(4) The user selects “print” from the menu of the photoretouch software to command the printer to print an image represented by the image data file which is open currently.
In such a print system, it is difficult for a user who is not accustomed to the computer to operate the computer, and such user cannot often complete the aforementioned operation procedures. In consideration of such problem, a printer called a “direct printer” has been developed. The direct printer can be directly connected to the image inputting apparatus, and a sensed image can be printed simply by operating only the image inputting apparatus and printer. For this reason, even a user who is not accustomed to the computer can easily print the sensed image.
However, the direct printer is expensive since the printer itself requires a controller, a digital signal processor (DSP) for image processes, a module for communicating with the image inputting apparatus, and the like. Furthermore, the communication module must match or comply with the communication protocol of the image inputting apparatus, and image inputting apparatuses with which the direct printer can communicate are limited.
Furthermore, when the printer itself makes image processes such as color correction, dithering, color pallet formation, lightness correction, gain correction of color components, contrast correction, color temperature correction, gamma correction, and the like, it requires a high-speed arithmetic device and a large memory size to achieve high print speed, thus considerably increasing the printer cost.